Def Leppard seem to be constantly busy. The band is currently out on the road for their Summer Stadium Tour and just recently released a new single “Just Like 73.” We recently caught up with guitarist Vivian Campbell via Zoom to talk the tour, new music and more. The night before we spoke the tour had hit Philadelphia. I asked Viv how the show went, and he said “Every show is really, really good. Like some times we come off and you know somebody says well “I didn’t have a great show.” It’s like, I didn’t notice.” He went to say there is a level of consistency in the band and that it just gets better and better. “We’ve been doing this long enough that we’ve, we’re really in a groove.”
We can’t talk about the live shows without discussing the set list. Being a co headlining tour with Journey, although Def Leppard is closing every show, they do have to condense their set to 90 minutes. There are a lot of hits to pack into that time. Last year being the 40th anniversary of “Pyromania” they do want to celebrate that album despite being a year late. You can watch a conversation with drummer Rick Allen about that album’s anniversary here. The band also has a desire to play some deep cuts as well, especially from “Pyromania.” Including one song they’d never played live until this tour. Plus, they are still doing some acoustic numbers during the show on the satellite stage.
Viv also mentioned playing their new single “Just Like 73″ during the shows as well. We talked about Viv being around 11 in 1973. Being all within a few years of each other “That was the time when we all came of age musically. That was our musical awakening.” Viv then mentioned many of his influences from then, Marc Bolan and T. Rex and David Bowie doing Ziggy Stardust. While talking about the new single I asked Viv if there were plans for a new album to which he answered “Well there is actually. ‘Just Like 73′ was left over from ‘Diamond Star Halos.’ The song just wasn’t quite finished a few years ago. Plus, we had an abundance of songs for ‘Diamond Star.’ And yes, we are constantly writing music and yes there will be another record.” “We do it for ourselves. We make albums and record new music and write new music for selfish reasons. We sort of have to do it. It is what we do.” That is their way of staying relevant and at the same time the band has no expectations of having hits these days.
Then new took some time to cover Viv’s guitars. Despite his first guitar being a Fender Telecaster, he said, “I’m all Les Paul’s all the time now.” Then he began mentioning his guitar heroes, the first one being the late Rory Gallagher. Next was Gary Moore who had played in Thin Lizzy. Then Viv shared a story about how his dad had bought him that Telecaster as a present. He ended up trading that guitar for his first Les Paul which Viv can quickly rattle off the serial number for it, and he still has the guitar. “If the house was on fire that would be the one guitar I would grab and run out with.”
From there I had to connect some dots in our conversation. Viv said, “I could talk guitars all day.” Earlier Viv had mentioned wanting a Fender Stratocaster because Rory Gallagher played one. Rory’s legendary Strat is going up for auction. I asked if Viv had any plans to bid on that or any of Rory’s guitars. He is not planning on bidding on any of them. He did share a great story of playing that Strat while sitting with Rory. But because of the heavy strings and the action being high for slide playing he found it difficult to play and it left him feeling embarrassed. Although he easily laughs about it now.
Viv has a rescue dog Stu who we took some time to talk about, you can see a post from Stu’s Instagram below. Viv and his wife fostered Stu to save him from being put down and then decided to keep him. Stu has been on tour with Viv in the past but not this time because Stu is currently dealing with cancer. From there we spoke about Viv’s own fight with cancer. He spoke about a procedure to come after this tour. Heart was supposed to be part of this Summer Stadium Tour but had to drop out so Ann Wilson could get some “Preventative chemo.” I asked Viv if he had spoken to her about it at all. Even though he hadn’t he did say “If she ever wants to give me a call, I got a bit of experience.”
With just a little time remaining I did want to ask Viv about his side project Last In Line. Viv explained with this tour it’ll be a while before they can do any live shows, but they are working on a new record. For their past albums they cut them live in the studio. This time though they’ll have to work on recording the albums remotely. I explained in here that the Dio album “Last In Line” turns 40 this year. The band got their name from this album because the main core of the band had been part of Dio. Viv talked about the early days of Dio and how quickly things came together and how special it was. He had great praise for his band mates Ronnie James Dio, Vinny Appice, and Jimmy Bain.
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